Chapter 6 #2
He pressed his palm flat on the sill, steadying himself.
This was all new ground. Ledgers and contracts he knew; households, tenants, codicils, and inheritance were another world.
He had already stumbled once with Miss Whittington.
One slip could be excused. Another would be folly.
He would learn his footing if he kept his wits.
This was to be his greatest apprenticeship, after all.
Better to master his part than blunder in and lose all respect before he had earned it. He straightened, tugging his coat into place.
Tucked in Lobelia Hall’s west wing was the household chapel. Candles flickered, their flames bowing from the draft that slipped around the door, casting dancing figures against the walls.
Phoebe sat midway down the pew, Fanny close to her side.
The chaplain’s voice rose steady and sure: “Brethren, though the body is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. Though the grave receives us, yet in Christ we are made new creatures.”
The scent of beeswax and damp stone wrinkled Phoebe’s nose. She stifled a sneeze.
At the far end, Mr. Ellison occupied his own bench, posture precise as ever, prayer book balanced in his hand.
“This house, heavy with mourning, may yet rejoice, for the Lord promises that sorrow endureth but for a night, and joy cometh in the morning.”
Her attention fell on the first pew. Empty. The pew where the old earl would have sat, where the new earl would soon sit, where she could sit if she won his affection. She hid a smile: the earl remained unmarried. Mr. Ellison had let slip this most important detail.
Absently, she opened the Book of Common Prayer and leafed through the pages, her fingertips brushing the frayed edges.
From across the aisle, a soft snore whistled low.
When she spied the housekeeper elbowing the butler, sending his head bobbing against his chest, Phoebe smothered a smile.
A glance at Mr. Ellison, however, chastised her.
His head was bowed, lips moving in prayer.
Chagrined to be so ill-behaved, she looked away.
The chaplain’s cadence swelled like a tide. “Even as old stones may be renewed with fair mortar, so too may the heart, broken though it be, be made whole again.”
Tracing the cracked spine of her book, her thoughts strayed.
The chapel itself bore scars of age, colored glass long replaced with plain panes, paneling stripped to bare stone.
She imagined its former beauty, mourned it, yet wondered if there was a certain grace in its renewal, readied for a new generation.
“We are not bound forever to the yoke of corruption. For Christ hath made us free, not unto license, but into righteousness.”
A flicker at the high window drew her eye. A bird, wings quivering, darted into a shallow alcove where a few twig ends betrayed a hidden nest, such a fragile home, exposed and precarious… yet free. A cantilevered stone was all it needed. Freedom, not grandeur.
“As the bird finds its rest in the branches,” the chaplain intoned, “so doth the soul find its rest in the Lord. If we walk in newness of life, then even our sorrows become but wings to lift us nearer to heaven.”
Phoebe’s breath caught. Could the chaplain see the bird too? No, his eyes never lifted from the page. She looked back to the alcove. The bird was gone, leaving only the faint tremor of a falling feather in its wake.
How she envied it. She had always had finery, but never freedom.
Finery had come with the price of being her father’s puppet on a string, forced to dance attention on every merchant of his choosing to secure a better deal.
All she had ever wanted was freedom. At one time, she had also wished for love, but she had since learned her lesson. Now, freedom alone would do.
As the chaplain’s words rose and fell around her, filling her with the warmth of her heart’s desire, she felt the weight of someone’s gaze.
Lowering her eyes from the window, she searched the pews.
For some inexplicable reason, she dared another glance at Mr. Ellison, half expecting his gaze to meet hers, but although his profile was angled towards her, his eyes were trained on his book.
“See then, beloved, how one generation passeth away, and another cometh, but the earth abideth forever. Our fathers laid the foundation, we build thereupon, and they who follow shall build after us.”
Phoebe’s fingers tightened around her book. Had she not convinced herself only the earl could give her freedom? But if, as she had explained to Mr. Ellison, she truly sought security, not title or fortune, might there be other ways than courting an earl who was not even present?
The chaplain’s voice sank into the cadence of prayer, the congregation bowing as one. “Let us, then, walk circumspectly, redeeming the time, for the days are evil. Yet even in death, the faithful are not lost, but are as seed in the ground, awaiting the Lord’s harvest.”
Feeling the weight, once more, of being watched, she glanced up.
This time, Mr. Ellison’s gaze collided with hers.
The candlelight softened the rigid lines of his face, smoothing the scowl between his brows. For the first time, he looked… approachable.
Heat rushed to her cheeks. She dropped her lashes and fumbled to turn the page, her pulse battered too wildly to afford the words the study they demanded.
From that point forward, she heard little of the chaplain’s sermon, her thoughts erratic, her awareness on a pair of kind eyes.
The service closed with the rustle of pages and the shuffle of feet on stone.
Candles guttered as the small congregation of upper servants dispersed in quiet murmurs.
Phoebe lingered, smoothing her gloves, unwilling to break the fragile spell of the curious and unexpected possibility that freedom might not come only by way of an earl, or more to the point, nervous her blush would betray the direction of her thoughts if she came face to face with a certain solicitor.
Daylight and time would bring her back to her senses.
When at last she rose to leave, a voice spoke over her shoulder.
“Miss Whittington.”
Schooling her features, Phoebe turned. Mr. Ellison stood at the end of her pew, posture as correct as ever, but his tone gentle.
“The air is clear after the storm,” he said, inclining his head towards the garden. “If you would care for a walk…”
Her lips curved, a flutter of… what? Anticipation? Triumph?… something wonderful hidden in her acceptance. “Thank you, Mr. Ellison. I believe I would.”